Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Mother of the Everglades

Marjory Stoneman Douglas was born in 1890 in Minnesota, but grew up in Massachusetts where her father worked for the Boston Herald. Her mother regaled her with stories of her Aunt Katie who had been a leader in the Underground Railroad. Naturally, Douglas developed a love for writing and a sense of social justice.

Douglas attended Wellesley College, graduating with all A's as an English major. Douglas, however, was seeking a change from her family life upon graduation. She married Kenneth Douglas who was thirty years older than herself which led to an estrangement from her family.

After the couple lived together in New Jersey and Manhattan, it soon became obvious to Douglas that her husband was not the man she thought he was. They lived a nomadic lifestyle, moving from one hotel to another and Kenneth Douglas was jailed for a bounced check. Personal relations between the two were also rife with feelings of domination by Douglas over his new wife.

By this time, Douglas' father and new wife had moved to Miami, Florida where her father started a newspaper which would later become the Miami Herald. He offered his daughter an opportunity to live with them and write for his newspaper.

Douglas took him up on the offer and when her father assigned her to write a story about the first woman to join the Navy during World War II, Douglas jumped at the chance. However, since there were no women in the Navy, Douglas took it upon herself to be the first to sign up.

Douglas didn't see any action while in the service. She was relegated to granting boat licenses and typing letters. She served one year and was given an honorable discharge.

She began writing a daily column for her father's paper called "The Galley," mostly editorials about hard news topics such as women's rights, racial justice and conservation. It was this last subject which would become the cause that Douglas would work toward for the rest of her life.

At the time, the Florida Everglades were considered nothing more than mosquito-infested swampland. Douglas set about changing that impression. She wrote numerous articles on the Everglades, highlighting the natural beauty of its flora and fauna, its birds, fish and even reptiles as wonders to be preserved and cherished. She joined committees dedicated to the preservation of the Everglades.

The Everglades covers 4,500 square miles, with water flowing through marsh and saw grass toward the estuaries of the Gulf of Mexico. It is fed by Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimmee River Basin.

In 1947, the first edition of "Everglades: River of Grass" was written by Douglas and published. Later that same year, President Harry Truman designated the Everglades as a national park. The 60th Anniversary edition of "Everglades: River of Grass" was published in 2007 by Pineapple Press.

The opening words from "Everglades: River of Grass: expressed Douglas' passion for the area: "There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth; remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them..."[1]

Despite the Everglades being a national park, in the 1950s, the U.S. Corps of Engineers were about to implement a system of canals, levees, dams and pumping stations to protect the area surrounding the Everglades from flooding. There was even a plan to drain the Everglades and build a shopping mall and homes. Their plans would have had a major impact on the wildlife as well as destruction of the Everglades themselves.

Douglas was at the forefront of the fight against the Corps of Engineers.

"The Everglades is a test," she once quipped, "if we pass it, we may get to keep the planet."[2]

In the 1960's, more plans to build an international airport in the middle of the Everglades, once again threatened to destroy the balanced eco-system. Once again, Douglas fought and won the battle against those plans.

In 1970, Douglas formed the group, Friends of the Everglades, which is still an active group today. Douglas was over 100 years old when she stepped down from active leadership of the group. She was called the "Mother of the Everglades" by her contemporaries.

Friends of the Everglades lists three goals on their website:
• Compel government agencies to comply with existing environmental laws, and resist any efforts to weaken such laws;
• Encourage politicians to recognize the long consequences of their actions;
• Spread awareness of the importance to the South Florida ecosystem.

Douglas was also a charter member of the first American Civil Liberties Union chapter in the South. She urged the Tallahassee legislature to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. She convinced the Dade County School Board to take the Biscayne Nature Center out of the hot dog stands where they were working and to give that organization some portable buildings. In 1991, the Nature Center was endowed with $1.8 million for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center in Crandon Park.

She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas award was established in 1986 given to an individual "who often must go to great lengths to advocate and fight for the protection of the National Park System."

In 1987, her autobiography "Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Voice of the River" was published by Pineapple Press.

She was inducted into the National Wildlife Federation Hall of Fame in 1999.

A life-size bronze statue of Douglas resides in Coral Gables in the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden which she helped to develop.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas died in 1998 at the age of 108.

Douglas was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2000.

Sources:

[1] Friends of the Everglades/"Everglades: River of Grass"
[2] Leadership